


Blood on Blood

by compo67



Series: Chicago Verse [116]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Childhood Trauma, Established Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Established Relationship, Grumpy Old Men, Hospitalization, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Old Married Couple, Post-Series, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Recovery, Song Lyrics, Telekinesis, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 06:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12765327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/compo67/pseuds/compo67
Summary: Optimism just doesn’t work the same in a hospital room.





	Blood on Blood

**Author's Note:**

> "highway patrolman" by springsteen.

Sam remembers starvation.

He was six years old the first time it happened. It wasn’t the lack of food, warmth, or shelter. John was still getting regular work in the small towns they passed through. He wasn’t so far into his fixation. People were able to shrug off the particular look in his eyes and consider him just another single father.

To save money, John had Sam and Dean share a bed at every motel. It’s not like a six and ten year old took up that much space anyway.

But then Sam started having nightmares.

John’s solution worked on the theory that Sam had to learn how to get through them without waking up the people around him. So one night, he rented out a motel room with one queen bed, plopped Sam onto it, and shut the door. He slept on the couch and forced Dean to sleep in a sleeping bag nearby.

Every time Sam woke up crying, John prevented Dean from getting up and responding.

It was a poorly executed parenting method.

The intent was to make Sam learn how to self-soothe. Instead, it made him paranoid, suspicious, and exhausted. He couldn’t explain his dreams because he didn’t have the words to do so. How does anyone describe faces melting and sheets twisting to strangle him--and everything in the background washed with a sick, pale shade of yellow?

Occasionally, John cracked the door open. Sam remembers those solitary rays of dim television light puncturing the darkness of that room. Each time John checked on him, he never walked past the doorway. In the mornings, he’d mutter that Sam needed to learn how to cope. He wouldn’t always be able to share a bed with Dean or have John in the room next door.

Only half of that statement turned out to be true.

Dean doesn’t leave the hospital room.

He showers and dresses in the miniscule bathroom available in Sam’s private room.

A private room only sounds nice. It isn’t actually any nicer than any other rooms on the stroke floor. Sticking him here serves to keep others safe from harm.

It brings back memories he’d rather not deal with at the moment.

The blood pressure cuff nudges Sam out of that loop. It activates every thirty minutes, asleep or not. In the ICU, it went off every fifteen minutes, so this is a marked improvement. Many of the nurses and doctors who have been through here keep emphasizing the importance of recovery in small steps.

Optimism just doesn’t work the same in a hospital room.

“You got a MRI in fifteen,” Dean announces, stepping out of the bathroom. Steam follows him in gentle curls. Dean fixes his tie, tries to keep it flat. “You sure you don’t wanna shave?”

This hospital doesn’t have a dress code, yet Dean has worn nothing but suits or button down shirts and ties the entire time Sam has been on the stroke floor. That’s four combinations of suits and carefully knotted ties. Civilians in hospital settings react better to suits. Old habits die hard.

“I’m fine,” Sam murmurs. He tears his eyes away from Dean. “You don’t have to go with me.”

Dean smooths out the tie one last time and gives up. He takes his usual seat on Sam’s right--the side most absent of machines. “Well, I figured I’d try to jam my head into the machine at the same time, get a free MRI for myself while we’re here.”

Sam closes his eyes. The walls are white and they hurt to look at after a while.

“If you’re not excited about lying in a metal tube for half an hour…” Dean opens up one of two pudding cups on the tray table. “Today’s your first day of PT.”

“Yeah.”

“I can give you a quick shave before we head over there.”

 _No_.

“Hey. We talked about that.”

_So?_

“So, talk.”

 _This is talking_.

With a shake of his head, Dean digs into the pudding. “Fine, Sam. First you woke up early. Then you didn’t finish all of your breakfast. Now this.”

Everything exhausts Sam. Listening to Dean. Staying awake. Sleeping. Lifting his hands. Pressing the buttons to adjust his bed. Watching the blank, white walls that surround him. Watching anyone around him move or speak. Even communicating with Dean--spoken or not--depletes whatever energy he possesses moment to moment.

Of course, Dean can’t let things go. He starts on the next pudding cup and insists that Sam finish it. “I ate half, you eat the other. Look. There’s not much left and it’s vanilla. Just like you.”

 _Not now_.

“Man, don’t make me do the airplane noises.”

Sam opens his eyes to shoot a brief glare Dean’s way. Did he not understand no the first three thousand times? He doesn’t want pudding. Or jello. Or soup. Or oatmeal. Or whatever slop they slap onto a tray and call it sustenance. He doesn’t want any of it and Dean just keeps trying to push the spoon against Sam’s mouth. And the lights feel ten times brighter than what they were two minutes ago. The ringing in his ears heightens in volume and pitch; this has been on and off since he left the ICU and always seems to kick in at the _best_ possible times.

The tray table flips over in one, quick, violent motion.

Immediately, Dean stands to try and minimize the damage.

Too late. Several nurses rush in. They’ve been briefed on “the situation.” Though Sam isn’t sure they were briefed as much as they spoke to the frightened ER and ICU staff. Only the necessary machines, plus one chair and table tray, have been allowed in Sam’s room. Dean has been walking without his cane.

“Just an accident,” Dean grits out. “I got it, I’ll clean it up.”

“Mr. Winchester,” one of the nurses says, placing her hand on Dean’s shoulder. “It’s fine. It’s time for Sam’s MRI.” She turns to Sam, faceless, her features distorted. “While you’re gone, we’ll clean up and put some fresh sheets and blankets on the bed.”

Off.

Sam wants her hand off of Dean.

Cutlery on the floor begins to rattle. The plastic lid to the unfinished, cold bowl of soup spins around, counterclockwise. Dean moves. His boot stomps down on the offending items with a sick crunch.

The nurse withdraws her hand. Her coworker suggests a few minutes of space.

Good idea.

“I understand that shit when you’re unconscious,” Dean snaps as soon as the door shuts. “But god dammit, Sam--”

“So stop me.” Sam’s tone matches Dean’s. “You can stop me.”

He’s the only one who can stop him.

Dean maintains eye contact with Sam for a few more seconds, then breaks it the same way he stomped his boot. Carefully, he bends down and picks up the table. With a soft grunt, he wheels it into a corner, out of the way. “There are a million things I want to say to you right now, not all of them pretty, but we’re late.” Tie straightened, Dean takes a step towards the bed, taller than Sam for once. In a low voice, Dean rumbles, “I’m not letting you check out. I _can_ and _will_ stop you from that.”

For good measure, and because he’s a jerk, Dean straightens his tie once more just to show he means business. Sam rolls his eyes, which Dean ignores.

A different nurse--male, an inch shorter than Dean--walks in and attempts to approach the situation with a positive attitude. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Good fucking luck. Sam doesn’t respond to a single joke, comment, or lighthearted observation. Dean does, and good for him. He can yap away with the nurse. Why don’t they just hold hands while they’re at it? Then they can both skip merrily into the sunset.

If they’re such good friends, they can both go suck a hospital-grade hard boiled egg.

More cheerful nurses herald Sam’s arrival to radiology. By the size of their smiles, it seems like this is the happenin’ place to be. That or word about Sam has spread and everyone’s terrified of him. And that’s fine. But he’d prefer less smiling.

And he’d prefer it if everyone quit speaking so fast and expecting him to respond at their same breakneck pace. Yes, the information on his wrist is correct. Yes, he knows how a god damn MRI works.

Two nurses engage in a stand and pivot transfer.

Sam hates every moment of it.

He burns with rage hot enough to warm up the cold slab they’ve placed him on. Someone asks him if he wants classic rock or classical music. He doesn’t respond because he doesn’t care.

“Last chance to invite me in with you,” Dean says, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

_No._

Dean sighs. “ _Don’t do that shit when you’re in there._ You’ll be in and out, then we can have lunch and watch the Wheel.”

_I hate the Wheel._

The lucky technician assigned to Sam provides directions before asking Dean to step outside. Once she completes those, she also steps outside.

And just like that, Sam is left in a room by himself.

“Lie absolutely still,” the technician instructs, her voice filtered through a staticky speaker.

Well, if there’s one thing Sam can do, it’s lie absolutely still, especially on his right side. Hell, if he went up against a sloth as to who could keep their right side the most still, Sam would win, left hand down. Oh yeah, no one’s going to beat him at that game for at least three to four weeks--minimum. And not without hours and hours of physical therapists smiling at him, making small talk, and feeding him bullshit about how great it is that he can move two fingers instead of just the one that day.

Joy.

The MRI machine whirs to life. It’s not particularly loud, but the noise it makes isn’t soothing by any means. Sam closes his eyes and takes a deep breath as he slides inside the giant magnet. A speaker within allows him to hear the technician deliver specific instructions--and then classic rock.

Sam huffs at the sound of REO Speedwagon.

It’s probably not in his best interest to short circuit the speaker during the MRI scan.

His treatment team have done a number of tests on him since he was stabilized. This MRI will give them a detailed view of his brain tissue to assess the damage. Yesterday was the carotid ultrasound--sound waves created detailed images of the carotid arteries in his neck in hopes of showing any buildup of fatty deposits or blockage. The day before that was the echocardiogram--more sound waves over his heart.

Beyond that, it’s been a blur.

Kevin was here at some point. He stayed with Sam while Dean went home to sleep, eat, and pack a change of clothes. Supposedly, Kevin will be back in a few days, yet again to give Dean a break.

Mrs. Martinez stops by every evening. The nurses have stopped trying to enforce visiting hours. She doesn’t say much, but the cup of broth she brings is leaps and bounds better than what the hospital provides him. Dean says she taped a cross on the outside of his door.

Dean has repeatedly stated that Sam will get better in no time with his tried and true plan of booze, bullets, and bacon.

Booze might help. At least then he’d feel warm and mushy after enough of it. Then it wouldn’t matter what parts of his body felt numb. And the slur to his speech would have an obvious cause. If he were to stumble and trip, well, he’d just had too much to drink, that’s all.

It would give him an explanation with the illusion of control.

For years, Sam ate the same food Dean ate. Drank the same stale coffee, the same crusty donuts, the same sawdust hamburgers, and the same cans of Spaghettios. He was raised on Wonderbread. Food preservatives accounted for ninety-nine percent of his diet.

Most students chose not to eat at the cafeterias at Stanford. For Sam, they were buffets of options--a gateway into fresh food. The salad bars were always well-stocked, the dressing choice was plentiful, and no one made lemon cake like Madge. When he moved in with Jess, they took turns cooking. She hadn’t grown up on Wonderbread, but never judged Sam when he bought a loaf out of habit.

Sometimes, during midterms, they ate Fruit Loops at two in the morning.

Once he knew what real food was like, he could never go back to John Winchester’s Diet for Children and Young Adults. And once he knew what real food Dean could make, he could never go back to pre-packaged salads or diner greens again.

Sam eats well. He takes a multivitamin.

Sam exercises. He runs three miles three times a week.

Sam rests more. He scaled back to teaching only three times a week, two classes a semester.

What could he have done better? What could he have done less? What can he do better and what can he do less of now? No one can seem to answer that.

Bruce Springsteen graces the speakers.

Sam knows this song.

It hurts to try and keep up with the words.

He wants to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but alone inside this tube. Anywhere but alone inside a bright white coffin. Anywhere but that motel room, alone with his nightmares. Anywhere but alone with this god damn Bruce Springsteen song.

“Me and Frankie laughin’ and drinkin’ nothin’ feels better than blood on blood. I catch him when he’s strayin’ like any brother would. Man turns his back on the family, well he just ain’t no good.”

No one supported Bruce making the album. People told him it was too dark. The total opposite of what people expected from him. So he said fuck you and did it anyway. He recorded the entire thing on a four-track cassette recorder. _Nebraska_ is the only major Springsteen release not supported by a tour.

How, why, does Sam know any of that?

Johnny Cash covered it in 1983 and it’s an admirable attempt, but nothing like the original.

The original haunts. The original is bleak, harsh, and hushed. Nothing feels better than blood on blood.

As the song ends, so does the MRI scan.

Out of the coffin.

And into Dean’s arms.

Dean doesn’t care that Sam can’t lift his right arm to return the embrace. He doesn’t care that Sam can’t sit up without help. He certainly doesn’t care that Sam starts to cry.

Nothing has ever felt better than blood on blood.

 

**Author's Note:**

> omg my heart. 
> 
> a month ago, i went to see Sean McConnell in concert. his opener was a great singer Kevin Andrew Prchal. He sang a cover of this Springsteen song and i've been hooked on it since. i knew i had to find a way to incorporate it into TCV.
> 
> so uh... here we are. comments are love??? (don't hate me!)
> 
> i weaved a lot into this, so i'm worried it's a bit too subtle?


End file.
